Word Play 3 (Patreon)

Word Play
Chapter 3

-VB-

I was at the motel room, tinkering with a few small cans of paint, a rusty spoon, and a face mask when another round of powers rammed into me.

Ministry 1 and Fragment 1. Fragment was a Striker power that increased my blunt force damage against blunt things, and Ministry let me understand the needs of whomever was directly underneath me or whom I was speaking to.

Immediately, I decided that Fragment was useless and sacrificed it. With its charge, I expanded Ministry's effects. It now also granted my speech weight and trustworthiness…. Wait, this was now a Master power.

It wasn't what I wanted or needed. I sacrificed it for a tier 2 charge.

Grrr…

I blinked and looked up.

“Oh, you’re back!” I smiled happily at my current projection. I knew that it wasn’t really alive, merely a product of Horrify 3, but I already felt homesick and lonely. In this world where Doctor Who never restarted, this Weeping Angel remained a reminder of my home.

It also had blood on it.

“Did you kill a lot?”

I intentionally blinked rapidly, and saw the angel shake its head.

“Good, good. If you killed too many scum, then their top boss will come out and make a scene. We can’t have that yet.”

I stood up and stretched before looking back down at my first ever finished Tinkertech.

I grinned.

“Can you deliver this to the Ruby Casino? It should be in the Docks. That’s north of here,” I asked it - him, her? - while handing the device and closing my eyes.

Grrr…

When I opened my eyes, it was gone.

My eyes widened as two more powers turned up within my mindscape.

Confine 1 and Conventional 1.

I immediately burned Conventional to improve Confine 1 to Confine 2.

Confine 2 existed as a Shaker power, and created at a spot a small space loop. It was like a baby version of Vista’s power.

I combined it with the tier 2 charge from earlier, and got Confine 3. This significantly increased the area to cover a small house.

It was still a weaker version of Vista’s power, and her power was rated at like Shaker 8, so there was no way I could beat her at her own game for a long time and thus there was no point to it.

Instead, I sacrificed Confine 3 to make a tier 3 charge, and then immediately applied to Horrify 3.

Horrify 4 greeted me with a murderously cold and yet sticky obsession. It was a much more lively thing than the robotic thing from before. I wasn’t sure if I liked or disliked that?

I’ll settle with ambivalence for now.

Now, what were its expanded powers now?

‘Tinkertech got buffed, I can transform into things like Shoggoth now (nice), paralyze people with fear, and create up to five projections.’

Horrify 4 quickly informed me the maximum cumulative quality its projections can take, and I basically understood it as not having enough projections to be stronger than … I wasn’t sure what it was trying to show me, but it was a pretty strong thing. It also showed me that while I could summon copies of horrors I knew of (Shoggoths, Forgotten Ones, and etc), they would be weaker than the originals.

That was easy.

Of course, it wasn’t creative and Brockton Bay would quickly get used to them, but I wasn’t limited only to Weeping Angels.

With a flourish of my hand, a new projection came forth.

I grinned.

-VB-

Dean Stansfield stared at the stone gargoyle at the corner of his father’s business headquarters.

He stared because the stone gargoyle had feelings. Its hunger radiated out in a angry hot aura.

And it knew he knew.

He remembered the debriefing again, one where Miss Militia stressed the need to be vigilant.

“...moving stone statute.”

“...don’t look at its eyes…”

“Don’t blink! Blink and you’re dead!”

Frozen in terror and unwilling to move a single inch, he stared at it because his life depended on it.

“Dean, what’s wrong?” Vicky asked him while stopping.

He almost ignored her, but remembered that she was Victoria Dallon, otherwise known to the public and world as Glory Girl, a local superheroine cape. She was called the “next Alexandria” for a good reason. Not only that, she was the strongest Brute and one of the best fliers in Brockton Bay.

“A villain. Up there. The gargoyle on the left. It has feelings. It’s hungry.”

Her head snapped up.

“... Are you sure?” she asked him seriously before looking around. “You’re not kidding me. I don’t see any other statues.”

“It’ll disappear if no one is looking at it… at the debriefing, we've been told that it's already killed four people."

"Is it a cape-? Where did it go?"

His stomach dropped. He blinked and so did Vicky.

"Shit."

"I'm sorry, but I need to call this in," he apologized before pulling out the non-distinct PRT work phone, glancing around to make sure there were no eavesdroppers, and then made the call.